It Is a Sad and Beautiful World

My jingle isn't going to be used after all, I found out today. I'm pretty bummed about it. My boss decided it's not aggressive enough for the client's image and he bought some other piece of stock music from Toronto with no lyrics instead, probably for a lot less money than what I was going to charge. He says it doesn't mean we won't use it for something else, but I don't really see how that's possible, since it's a jingle about O'Regan's Chevrolet-Cadillac. So, since it'll never be on the radio (boo!), I guess I can let you hear it (yay!). Enjoy.


You will never hear this song on your way to the beach.

Last week, especially the weekend, was a bit busier than I'm comfortable with, but a lot of it was pretty fun stuff. Johanna's first ever solo painting exhibit opened at the Argyle Fine Art Gallery on Friday night, so we went to that and out to a bar afterwards with her. It's a really great show and if anyone's reading this who actually has the option of going to check it out, I can tell you it's definitely worthwhile. All the paintings, which she completed over the last year, are of the area in the LaHave Islands where her parents have had a cottage for decades, and they're all done in large, abstract brush strokes and a beautifully muted palette of greens and greys. Some of them sit absolutely still and others are full of movement and gesture, but they all express — or maybe "exude" is more accurate — a deep, almost mystical love of nature that remains defiantly level-headed in the face of blinding rapture.

Saturday was full of yoga, errands, and a fun rock show at the One World Café, followed by some more hanging out with Johanna. Then yesterday we spent all afternoon Christmas shopping in the Mic Mac Mall. Ugh. We just got Sunday shopping here a few weeks ago, and now everyone seems to actually wait until Sunday, as it's such a treat. I think we handled the relentless crowds pretty well, but were definitely tired by dinner time. Ron and Kristina, a couple of friends of ours out with whom we hadn't really hung before, had invited us to their house in Dartmouth for dinner, so we went straight there and had a really nice time listening to music and shooting the poop and appreciating their 3-year-old puppy, Seymour. They had to make us some special pasta sauce after we rudely refused the meat one they'd been simmering for awhile, and it was of course great. I hope we'll be seeing more of them, and I may even play some music with Ron if all goes according to plan.

Lastly, this has nothing to do with anything, but I find it very interesting. Beside the corner store that we regularly frequent, between it and what used to be a pizza place until it went out of business about a year ago, is a corner store/pizza place called "Rassy's". Or rather, was. Rassy's boldly plopped itself between Joe Thomeh's Convenience and Toulaney's Pizza Factory years ago and began to directly compete with both of its snug neighbours by putting pizza ovens in the back of a slightly less convenient store, and a rotating multi-pizza rack at the front. The Factory eventually couldn't compete and was sold, becoming Big Italy Pizza and almost immediately folding. So Rassy's earned itself a local monopoly on inedibly large slices of pizza. But I guess it wasn't enough because the other day it was suddenly boarded up. No warning, no signs, no explanation. Even Joe doesn't know what happened. "One night, he just go," Thomeh is reported to have shrugged. Alison and I went to check it out a couple of nights after the closure, and were still discussing it, bewildered, as we rounded the next corner and stopped short in front of a brand new establishment called "Razzy's," in the lit window of which sat two young men trying to finish their enormous pizza slices.

In conclusion, weird.

- Andrew